1. Technical Field
Example embodiments relate generally to semiconductor integrated circuits, and more particularly to a clock monitor and a system on chip including the clock monitor.
2. Discussion of the Related Art
Recently, large scale integrated circuits such as an application processor adopt a dynamic voltage and frequency scaling (DVFS) for low-power operations. As semiconductor manufacturing processes develop, one integrated circuit is designed to perform a number of operations and thus clock domains and/or power domains of the integrated circuit become complex.
The problems of system instability due to improper clock setting may be serious as the clock domain is more complex and frequency change is more frequent in the integrated circuit. In a real system development stage, the exact reason of a system irregularity may not be found and then the power supply voltage or the driving voltage is increased higher than the proper level to address the system irregularity, thereby unnecessarily increasing power consumption.